General McFist

Ladies and gentlemen. Welcome — to my words. In our previous episode, I discussed how quests given to our famed bounty hunter would differ from those prevalent in other games. In essence, there would be no fetch quests, save if a bounty would be need to be taken alive (no disintegrations!), and that quests could be declined without the possibility of ever accepting them and the possible outcomes for denying a quest. Today, I want to delve into how an open-world game could create vast prospects of dynamic, persistent quests.

Open-World sans Major Platforming

First off, I believe every Star Wars game should focus on interplanetary travel, thus we should not be confined to just one planet for the entirety of the game. The Force Unleashed is a prime example, though a very mediocre series, of how vast the Star Wars universe is, as in each game Starkiller is forced to travel to other planets in order to attain victory for the Light or Dark. While the games do have our character traveling to other worlds, the series is unabashedly linear and terribly short. The worlds we frequented were beautifully detailed and rich with a wonderful Star Wars art style, thus being denied any kind of deep exploration, side-paths excluded, felt as though we were being teased and taunted with a gigantic worlds that we were not allowed to get lost in.

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Another, more recent, game that is also guilty of this is Remember Me.

There is one that I would like to call attention to, as I believe it is the shining example of how an open-world game would fit Boba Fett wondrously. That game is the ever-terrific Deus Ex: Human Revolution.

Let's face it, when we play an Assassin's Creed game, doesn't every city feel like something we have already seen before? We can't really focus on the town, as the game encourages us to stay on its rooftops. It demands more platforming than actually getting lost in the city. Deus Ex is entirely different in that regard. Yes, at times we find ourselves climbing fire escapes and scaffolding so we can find other paths to reach our objectives. And, for a lot of us, we Gordon Freemaned our way through the vents of a building. However, aside from vents (should you choose to use them) these elements are kept very light, as if they game is telling us to wander about the city streets and look at how large these cities are.

The game makes us seem so very small in a giant, dystopian earth. And that is what a Boba Fett game would need. Think of an Assassin's Creed-sized city meets the sheer scale of Deus Ex. Copious alleyways to explore. Many side-paths around buildings. Even some rooftops for Boba Fett to jettison his way on to.

Plus, Human Revolution is a great example of how messy the Boba Fett game should be.The Star Wars universe is a dark, dirty, gritty place, a definite contrast to that of Star Trek, so we would need Deus Ex-style filth. I would even go so far as saying it needs to be something akin to Blade Runner —Because Blade Runner is awesome.

Slave I, Dynamic Quests, and You

We are going to pilot the Slave I. It is as iconic as Boba Fett's armor, and we would be doing a great disservice to people if they were not allowed to fly this magnificent steed.

Battlefront 2 had amazing space battles and this game needs to have strong spacecraft combat, as it has been many peoples' dream to fly the Slave I in a next-gen game. I'll go into combat later on in this episodic series, but suffice it to say that with how maneuverable the Slave I is, the battles could be slightly disorienting.

Now, keeping in line with our quests, when someone learns that they have a bounty on their head, and know that Boba Fett is looking to collect, it is fair to assume that they will not stay on that planet for long. That is, if they have the means to do so.

Depending on how you want to approach a situation, you can simply tag the bounty's ship, if you wish to engage them in space combat, or destroy it, giving him/her no escape. This, of course, hinges on whether or not you have information regarding which ship is theirs. Now, there would be a few options regarding the outcome of keeping the ship intact.

You could disable the ship's engines in combat and forcibly board the ship

You could annihilate it with a couple photon torpedoes

It could escape

The last option here now plays into interstellar travel and dynamic quests. By allowing the bounty to flee, he/she would then arrive at other ports on other worlds we can visit. We would temporarily fail the quest, as they have fled. As we progress through the game, however, we can still ask people/beings/droids, at other planets, if they have heard of your bounty arriving at the port. When you locate someone who knows the person is there, and knows someone who has information regarding the bounty's whereabouts, the quest will then update allowing you to continue your quest to kill/capture them.

That about sums up my thoughts and feelings regarding how I would love to see a brilliantly executed open world style game for Boba Fett. Soon, I will be discussing how experience points should play a part in this game and how we can actually earn them in the upcoming article: Episode VI: Return of the Experience Bar!